Jill Stein on Education

Green Party presidential nominee; Former Challenger for MA Governor

Bail out the students instead of bailing out the banks

OBAMA: We've got to make sure that we have the best education system in the world. We've worked hard so that student loans are available, but I also want to make sure that community colleges are offering slots for workers to get retrained.

STEIN:
To ensure that our students have a strong, secure economic future, how about we bail out the students instead of bailing out the banks for the fourth time? The Federal Reserve just announced its latest quantitative easing, where it will be spending
$40 billion a month to bail out the banks for what's effectively the fourth bailout, yet we've really gone nowhere with these bailouts. It's time to bail out the students instead, so that way students can enter into their professional life, their
careers, without the deep burden of debt that they currently now have. While we're at it, let's make public higher education free. We owe it to our young people to give them a good, strong start in life. And we know this pays for itself from the GI Bill.

Establish basic right to free college education

Students must be engaged because they bring creativity and fresh life into our economy. We will provide tuition-free higher education, since it's comparable to a high school education in the 20th century--you need a higher education degree in the
21st century economy and it should be provided as a basic right.

I also support legalization of marijuana, ending war, and other bread-and-butter concerns for young people. This is a constituency that is just itching for a platform of this sort.

Source: Interview with Steve Horn of Truthout.org
, Jan 29, 2012

Students are on the receiving end of generational injustice

Q: What's your strategy?

A: Our strategy has a lot to do with alternative media and selectively engaging with groups who have been screwed over by both parties. They don't need much convincing. Students, for one, they're there. Students are on the
receiving end of generational injustice, because [many problems] will end up falling into the hands of the youth and young people--unfairness in jobs, a climate catastrophe--and we have to ask ourselves what kind of world we're making for them, how we're
going to clean up this mess we've left for them. I mean, students and young people are really on the receiving end. What civilization devours its young? Because that's what we're doing. The profiteers are going after the young as a population to exploit.
That's why the loans are so high; that's why young people have been put at the bottom of the priority list. They are victims of profiteering. We are all about fighting that. We think green jobs will help with this fight; we will forgive student debt.

College loans trap students in financial prison of debt

Thirty million college students and recent graduates are trapped in the financial prison of student loan debt. Most students must take out costly loans to meet the skyrocketing cost of tuition.
Yet paying off those loans is almost impossible as young people face double-digit unemployment and much lower pay--40% less--than their parents' generation received for the same work.

Right to a tuition-free public education, pre-K thru college

The Green New Deal begins with an Economic Bill of Rights that recognizes our rights to an economy that serves people. This means all of us have the right to quality education, health care, housing and utilities.

We will honor the right to a
tuition-free, quality public education from pre-school through college at public institutions. And we will forgive student loan debt left over from the current era of unaffordable college education .

Focus on student needs, not corporate needs

Q: Should school curriculums be set by local school boards, national standards, or somewhere in between?

A: To my mind, the issue here is not so much national versus local; the issue is more one of child-centered learning, and learning for lifetime education as opposed to teaching to the test. We focus on student needs, not corporate needs.

Move school decisions from national to grassroots level

Q: You advocate for student needs over corporate education needs--does that mean schools should be more under local control, or more under federal control?

A:
Our philosophy is to move things to the grassroots level; to move power to the grassroots from the government. It's a decentralization philosophy. At the national level, we should focus on preventing abuse of education rules.

Charter school siphon resources from public schools

Q: What's your opinion on charter schools?

A: Unfortunately, charter schools draw down on funding for our public schools, and they siphon off the more capable students and their families. At the same time they concentrate the real social problems in th
public schools, which is guaranteed to collapse our public system from within. The advantages of charters ought to be features of all public schools: family engagement, additional resources and budget, and so on.

Opposes teacher-led prayer in public schools

Q: What do you think about teacher-led prayer in public schools?

A: I oppose it.

Q: Is that a federal issue or should it be left to the states?

A: The separation of church and state is inherently a federal issue.
It's hard to duck that. That is part of our Constitution. To favor one religion is to inherently favor the others. Government needs to be neutral in order to respect everyone's religion.

Source: 2011 OnTheIssues interview with Jill Stein
, Dec 21, 2011

Vital public system under attack from privatization

What if a quality public school, integrated into the fabric of the local community, was available to every student, without charge? In Massachusetts, our public schools and colleges are the cornerstone of our democracy and provide the foundation for our
citizens' economic success. But now this vital system is under sustained attack from privatization interests who undermine public schools as part of an effort to advance charter school interests.

The funding of education is clearly at a crisis point.
Years of neglect, fiscal mismanagement, and promotion of privatization have combined with a budget shortfall to seriously threaten the viability of our public education system. If we tilt toward privatization, it will produce a stratified collection
of schools that will make education more expensive, separate schools from their communities, and lead inevitably to the abandonment of the concept of equal access to education. Party leaders are now actively promoting charter school encroachment.

Stop blaming teachers for "underperforming schools"

Fully fund K through 12 education in every year, in every budget, for every student.

It's a matter of getting our priorities straight. Do we hand out more corporate welfare and more tax breaks to well-connected
CEO's? Or do we educate our kids? Jill says that kids come first.

Put public schools first, and don't undermine them with private charter schools.

Every child should have access to a quality public school in their neighborhood or community.
Undermining public schools in search of privatization will inevitably lead to more expensive education, inequality, and loss of the democratic right to a free education.

Let educators and parents decide how best to educate our children.

Blaming teachers for deceptively labeled "underperforming schools" is an attempt to divert attention from the failure of Beacon Hill to properly fund schools and to address other factors affecting the ability of students to learn.

Standardized tests are misused; they hurt students

We are misusing the MCAS test. This is hurting students and inflating school budgets. Standardized tests do not measure some of the most important goals of an educational system. Getting a passing grade on MCAS is not resulting in improved college
performance, a better trained workforce, or improvement on other tests of student capabilities.

Teachers are spending time trying to increase MCAS test scores rather than focusing on what students really need. State officials cite increases in
MCAS scores as if this signifies educational progress. It doesn't. It merely means that educational resources are being diverted into teaching to the test.

The goal of education should be to educate the whole student for lifelong learning and success.
The current obsession with high stakes testing distracts from addressing the profound barriers to learning that arise long before the child has walked through the classroom door, including poverty and unemployment, poor nutrition and community violence.

No economic barriers to quality college education

What if there were no economic barriers to students getting a quality higher education that prepared them for life, as well as employment? Jill Stein will reverse the escalation of fees and tuition at our public institutions of higher education.
We should not allow fiscal neglect to put financial barriers in the path of students of modest means who wish to obtain a college degree.

Jill Stein knows that education is the key to life-long success. A student who is only prepared to serve the short
term business goals of the high tech industry is not fully prepared for long term success in life and work. The lasting value of an education often lies in developing teamwork and conflict resolution skills, understanding the lessons of nature and
history, and readiness for civic leadership. Striking the right balance between true education and mere skill acquisition should be the responsibility of educators, not panels of high tech executives trying to solve their short-term business needs.